The slave, naked, knelt before Blaisse, fastened the top button of his pants, and clasped a silver belt around his waist. He seemed not to notice her, despite her unflawed form and the strange blue of her skin and hair, the sky-silver of her eyes. Gazing at her, Subtwo wanted to pull her to her feet and ask her if she had no pride or dignity. Then she fastened a stained, coiled whip to Blaisse's filigree belt, and Subtwo put aside his questions of dignity.
'Our ship is on the field,' Subtwo said.
Blaisse looked past him to the turned-out drawers and disarrayed
shelves. 'What is this farce? Yale!'
The guard came in, scowling.
'I thought I made it clear: no one from Center is allowed here.'
'They just landed,' she said.
'Don't be ridiculous.'
'They landed a ship. On the landing field. In the storm.'
Subtwo watched the changes in Blaisse's expression as the Lord took his time putting on the leather jacket his slave held for him: anger, astonishment colored by skepticism, and finally curiosity. He took a sharp breath and straightened, as if to reprimand them, but suddenly stepped toward them. 'In the storm?'
'Yes,' Subtwo said.
Blaisse's attitude changed again. 'I don't believe it.'
Subone's voice was a sculpture. 'You would be well advised,' he said, 'not to call us liars.'
'Don't threaten me.'
'We came to talk,' Subtwo said. Blaisse was right, in his way: it was not yet the time for threats. 'Merely to talk.' This did not seem to be the man they had been told about; he had been described with contempt, but Subtwo was not facing a contemptible man. Unpredictable, perhaps, and distasteful, but there were power and assurance in him, though they blended strangely with childishness and cruelty.
'What did you come to talk about?'
'Division of power.'
The young guard, Yale, caught her breath, and touched the handle of the laser lance again; she, at least, was taking those words as threat. But Blaisse hardly reacted. 'This is mine,' he said calmly. 'Here you take my orders.'
'That's what he said you'd say.'
Subtwo wished Subone had not spoken, but he could not do anything now; he was affected by his pseudosib's excitement at the prospect of violence. But Subone's excitement could not obliterate Subtwo's increasing perceptions of guilt.
'Who?'
'A shipowner allied to you. You did lose a ship, recently—?'
'You—!'
'Shut up, Yale.'
Sullenly, she obeyed. Blaisse's developing anger seemed to have been dissipated by hers; he sat down in a soft chair and stretched out his legs. 'We assumed Sphere officials had killed it.' He waved toward misshapen hulks of furniture. 'Sit down. Have you names?'
'I am Subtwo. My pseudosib is Subone.'
Blaisse raised an eyebrow, whether from the strangeness of the designations or because he was familiar with them, Subtwo did not know. He sat down on a couch with room for Subone next to him, but Subone sat farther away, watching the young guard and smiling slightly so his teeth showed past his thin lips.
'We'll have a drink. Saita!'
Dressed in silver and sapphires, the slave appeared almost instantly. She served first Blaisse, then the pseudosibs, with a thick blue liqueur. She did not offer anything to the guard.
Blaisse sipped from his crystal goblet. Subtwo raised his, to sniff the volatiles: heavy, varied, incompatible with organic life. He did not drink; he did not choose to dissolve the nerve sheaths of his brain cells with ethanol. But nearby, Subone tasted the offering.
'Now,' Blaisse said.
'You are undefended. We have our whole crew.'
'I'm not entirely alone.'
'Twelve people hardly make an army.'
Blaisse raised his head, an involuntary minuscule motion of surprise. Subtwo felt sure that he now believed that the pseudosibs, not the Sphere, had killed his ship.
'They guard me adequately in the winter. When my ships return in the spring, my forces are more than sufficient.'
'The crews—even the shipowners—would follow us.'
Blaisse sat back in his soft chair, sipped his drink, and rubbed his forefinger back and forth across his upper lip as though in deep concentration. 'I don't know about that.'
'They would follow us. They would follow whoever controlled their sanctuary.'
'Oh, that's quite true,' Blaisse said easily. 'Except a few of them, perhaps, but they could easily be gotten rid of.'
Yale, behind him, shifted uneasily, as though she too could hear capitulation in Blaisse's words. Subtwo smiled, ready to accept a bloodless surrender.
'On the other hand,' Blaisse said, 'then you would have to fight the Families.'
Subtwo made no involuntary movements of surprise, but this was new data, needing to be processed. 'We are accustomed to opposition.'
Subone seemed to be paying no attention at all to the conversation; Subtwo felt alone. He wished his pseudosib would stop his benign gazing at Yale: he understood her glare.
'You don't quite understand.'
'Understanding is not necessary.' Subtwo performed his shrug again. 'If they oppose us, we will destroy them.'
A small smile of pleasure began to form on Subone's face, and Yale's fingers curled around her belt near the holster of her lance.
'You'll destroy Center if you insist on total power.' Blaisse did not sound perturbed.
'You dealt with these 'Families.' '
'No, that was my father, years ago. He was. a very ambitious man.' Blaisse's expression was contented. 'Your information is incomplete.'
'Indeed?'
'My presence saves the shipowners from having to concern themselves with alliances in Center itself, you see, but my ties are indispensable all the same. An attack on me is an attack on the Families. And it's they, not I, who control the city.'
'Ties may be cut and rewoven.'
'Not ties of blood.'
Subtwo thought of arcane rituals, the piercing of veins, vampirism. 'Blood?'
'It was thought appropriate, since I control access to other worlds, that I be partnered with the eldest child of the Family which controls access to the rest of earth outside Center. My brother, in turn, lives with her people.' As Blaisse explained, Subtwo slowly understood that he did not mean 'blood' but genetics, and biological and social relationships. It was a most ridiculous way of forming alliances, though perhaps no more ridiculous than some he had witnessed. It was the way Center was ruled.
He saw that his choice was between dealing with the existing situation and engaging in an extended conflict. His and Subone's people could take over the Palace easily; they could even make it self-sufficient. But it would be exactly that, a closed citadel, lacking interchange with Center. They could build a citadel anywhere. But old earth was one place no official of the Sphere would ever come; and Subone had chosen this spot on the planet simply because of the city.
Subtwo's enthusiasm for this conquest flagged rapidly, for he saw that afterwards they would have to function within limits others had set. He wondered if this was what he had escaped to: a return to ancient history,
